The present invention relates to a plant cutting and transplanting apparatus wherein a plant tissue has been cut to a certain size and automatically transplants it into a vessel when the cultivation of plant tissue is performed.
Many types of mass cultivation of plants is performed by cutting plant buds, shoots, roots, leaves, stems, flower petals and other plant tissue and transplanting the cut tissue to a culture medium where it is multiplied a fixed number of times.
Initially, the task of cutting the plant tissue was performed manually and the piece of the cut plant was transplanted to a culture vessel by hand, but there are several problems inherent to such manual processes. Such manual processes have the limit when cutting and transplanting have to be performed for a large number of plants. Therefore, it is not possible to meet requirements for mass cultivation, there is the great danger of contamination by microorganisms, and thus the work requires highly skilled persons.
Because of this, there has been proposed a system (U.S. Pat. No. 4910146 issued Mar. 20, 1990) wherein the plant tissue cutting and transplanting is performed by a mechanical means, the plant is cut by a cutter divided into squares (blocks), combinations of the selected squares are selected and compressed air is blown into the selected squares and the plant fragments that have adhered to the blades forming the squares of the cutter are blown onto the culture medium inside the receptacle and so that a constant interval between them is maintained.
However, in the propagation and transplanting apparatus disclosed above, the square plant fragments that are attached to the blades of the square cutter are placed on the culture medium by being blown by compressed air. Because of this, it is difficult to transplant the plant fragments at uniform intervals on the culture medium, and there is the additional problem which create an obstruction to growth due to existence of residues in the corners of the container. Furthermore, the plant fragments can easily be broken.
In the light of this, the present invention has as an object the provision of a plant tissue cutting and transplanting apparatus that can transplant the required number of plant fragments that have been cut to a square shape into an orderly and even arrangement.